Little deaths

When I last posted, I meant to write about England and Bible Course, since both had recently happened. I spent so long going through my England pictures that I ran out of steam for Bible course, so now I'm playing catch-up again!

Four days after getting home from England, Mark's whole class left Tulsa for a New life Ranch a couple hours East of here. We spent a week there for Bible course; each day we had different speakers talk to us about some aspect of faith, medicine and the combination of the two. We also had the opportunity to do the ropes course there at the ranch, which was super-fun and filled with enough adrenaline to last the rest of the week!

One of the 'team-building exercises' was belaying for each other so no-one would crash to their death from great heights :)

Climbing Jacob's Ladder. the rungs got further apart as you climbed higher, and the vertical 'beams' were actually just metal cables. Made for a pretty tough climb!

Zip-line :)

The teaching we received was for the most part very inspiring and challenging. ("For the most part" because one of the speakers seemed to have a personality that I find very difficult to get along with, which made what they had to say more difficult for me to accept.) I think the one point that stands out to me the most from all of the teaching was something Dr Chris Berry (an Image grad) said while talking about weaving our faith into the way we practically live out our lives. He was talking about the love of God, and the facts that a) this love was most clearly demonstrated by His death on the cross, and b) we are called in John 15 to "love each other as I have loved you." This means that if we are truly loving the way Jesus does, there will be times that it feels a little like death to us. This is so counter-intuitive to me. When I hear the word 'love', it sounds warm and happy and fuzzy to me. It doesn't sound like dying! But when I am really and truly loving, this will often mean putting aside my own selfishness and sense of self-importance, and replacing those things with somebody else. And that sounds more like dying! But the reason that those little deaths are ok is that whatever I do for the least of these, I am doing unto my Jesus who, ultimately, is the One I want to love.

Now to put it into practice....!